


Joconde

by Anonymous



Category: Pocket Monsters: X & Y | Pokemon X & Y Versions
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cis Female Augustine Sycamore, Cis Female Lysandre, F/F, Not Beta Read, cisswap au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:52:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All considered, it is a very simple recipe that provides an unusually intriguing and aesthetically stunning end result.</p><p>Or, <em>in which two girls meet by accident at university, and then by accident at the library, and then by accident in the capital city, and then by accident at the very cusp of the end of the world, and nothing is nearly as complicated as it seems.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fruit Compote, Step One

> _Place 1 cup pomegranate juice in a small bowl._
> 
> _Sprinkle one tablespoon unflavoured gelatin powder._
> 
> _Allow to sit for 5 minutes, until softened._

Her head ached. The tension in her shoulders carried up through ligaments and joints to clamp down on her left temple and the right side of her nose, pounding them closer together with every beat of her heart. And, there were plenty of those. The anxious energy that came with every new lecture under Professor Gaubert was already building, and she'd barely left behind her dorm room. Her nice, safe living space, with its solid walls and particle board door that was barely a quarter as strong as the deadbolt.

She missed her deadbolt, as another sharp pulse of bleak pain lanced behind her eye, as her fingers fidgeted hopelessly in the fabric shield of her over sized sweater, which only encouraged nervous sweat to bead up more aggressively. But she would take sweat over staring any day, and the summer sunlight beaming down from behind the unhelpful curtain of grass scented breezes could bite her. She couldn't stay in her room forever, and if she was going to maintain her graduation timeline, she needed this class. So she wore graphite colored wool in July, hanging loose and tentlike off her skinny shoulders and hiding her hands, her hips, her entire frame.

It was almost like staying inside. If she imagined the panels of the sweater were walls, and she was safely ensconced inside them. There were so few people out walking around campus at this time of day, this time of year. She could probably take it off. The three dozen other pedestrians wouldn't care. But she would know, and the feeling of exposure would be worse than the heat. That almost everyone else was staying in the shade, lolling down the sidewalks that traveled under the groves of trees on the quad's border, making them too far away to efficiently ogle in the first place, was irrelevant. She didn't want to be seen.

Concrete pavements passed by under her silent sneakers, eaten up as she tried desperately to think her heart rate down, or to breathe her headache away. Neither worked.

She very nearly missed the only other person on the path across the main quad. Would have entirely if it weren't for the blessed movement of a pillowy cloud over the sun, giving her the barest and briefest respite from the sunlight, and allowing her eyes to track upwards briefly.

The woman must have been six foot six, at least. Entirely too tall to be wearing heeled ankleboots that high, and there was just the slightest waver in her step that Augustin recognized from her youngest cousin's recent introduction to heels. Augustin breathed into her sleeve, and the hand that had pushed it there, to stop herself from laughing. Of all the things a freshman could choose to rebel through, shoe fashion seemed the strangest.

Or perhaps it was all the fashion. The piped pencil skirt, black with glittery gold trim that matched the sequined gold top and black blazer screamed 'more effort than advisable for a first year university student.' The embossed stockings alone probably took ages to put on and line up in such a way that their print was even. Her hair was an obviously artificial red that blazed against the gold accents of her outfit like fire. Some kind of strange, plasma dragonfire that neither flickered nor curled, pulled back into the fiercest, sleekest ponyta tail Augustin could even begin to imagine, spilling down from the crown of her head through such a large scrunchie that it actually made an arc.

Her entire look, really, seemed more like architecture than anything else.

Which was why it was so difficult not to laugh.

On the hip of her skirt, wrapped around in perfect definition, were four bright white fingers made of powder. Talc, maybe. It was so utterly incongruous, and the woman's entire attitude, her stern face, her dismissive glare, just seemed to beg anyone to comment on her so that she could cut them down.

Conflict averse as she was even without headaches and deadlines and an unwanted class to attend, Augustin would have let her pass by unremarked upon. When the women- girl, a self conscious freshman behind all that cake makeup and tailored clothing- turned her ice chip glare on Augustin, she rolled over belly up immediately. Her own eyes dropped back to the pavement, face burning with a heat independent of sweaters in midsummer. The hand that had been stifling a laugh crawled behind her neck, fingernails pinching at the base of her skull even through wool. She couldn't scrape at her own scalp with her unwashed curls piled in a rat's nest of a bun at the nape of her neck, but she had a frantic urge to all the same. Curl her trimmed nails there, and let the strength and sharp edge of freshly clipped keratin drag into her skin until she could feel her pulse across her entire head. Her shoulders slumped, her spine curled, and she radiated a sort of helplessness that could only be achieved with years of practical experience.

It was almost certainly just pre-emptive terror for dealing with Professor Gaubert. Being paralyzed with terror from the dismissive glance of a freshman would be a bit much, even for her. Probably.

The ever so slightly off-beat click of the girl's heels on the pavement passing her uncurled some of the cold black fear in Augustin's gut, and she flickered with disgust at herself. She was getting worse. She had to be. This wasn't normal.

And wrapped up in that was the first tendril of guilt, whispering in the empty space behind her sternum, ticklish and unwelcome. That girl clearly had no idea that her carefully crafted outfit had been ruined like that. That some of the stares she would receive on her way to where ever she was going would be heavy with judgement rather than invited admiration.

Augustin knew those stares. She could feel them on her even now, even knowing hey weren't actually there. She couldn't just let someone else deal with them too. Especially not a freshman who had gone to such efforts to look older than she was. Anxiety manifested in different ways, but no one cared that much unless they were scared, too. Did they? Maybe some people did. Maybe she should just keep moving.

Her footsteps faltered. The Biology building was close. She could afford to turn, if she turned right now. She let her feet keep moving towards her intended destination.

She managed three steps before the conflux of guilt and fear and the vague notions of advice owed by graduate students to undergrad freshmen, senior oblige, won her over and she turned. Her hands found each other under the wool, nails tearing into her own wrists, but she'd made her choice now, and by Arceus she would hold to it. She pried one free and raised it overhead and a flinching wave as she called out, “Mademoiselle!

The girl stopped short, and turned to look at her with that same paralyzing glare, ice dripping down her spine. But by now, operating through a film of fear was second nature, and it would be good practice for her lecture in a few minutes anyway. Certainly it was nothing compared to the black tar feeling of Absolon's searching eyes. The look was cool and impersonal. Barely anything. Nothing at all. Not even the slightest detriment. No.

Before her nerves turned from poor decision making to no decision making, she reached the girl's side and, without so much as a by your leave, dragged her woolly sleeve over the handprint, smearing some of the powder in streaks, and pulling a fair amount of it on to the softer fabric of her sweater.

It was only then that she actually look at the girl's face. Her thinly plucked and darkly pencilled eyebrows were raised almost to her hairline, matching wide eyes. Her heavily painted lips were slacked open. The beginnings of a patchy, unpleasant flush were clawing their way to visibility behind her foundation.

That was the point at which Augustin reconsidered the relative merits of grabbing a stranger's hips.

Before whatever disgusted comment on impertinence- she was dead certain it would be phrased as impertinence- the girl was planning on presenting could be made, Augustin patted her hand on the powder stain. Little curls of dust drifted up from the wool of her sweater and the fabric of the skirt.

“You, well, someone. Probably you. Someone has drenched you in,” she dithered for a moment the beginnings of a timid, docile smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “In flour? I think. Or talcum, or maybe chalk, or gelatin, or-”

“I would be grateful if you unhanded me?” The upward lilt of the sentence that cut Augustin off before she could ramble out any more potential powders seemed poorly matched to the smooth, unenthused diction of the girl's contralto. It was just so nonsensical, and as keyed up as she was already anything out of place clattered across Augustin's mind loudly enough to drop her train of thought.

She didn't mean to snicker, as she snatched her hand back. But it slipped out anyway. Confused freshman. Hypothesis confirmed. She braced the laughter behind the skin of her fingers, spread over her mouth like a child with a secret, and asked through them, “Oh, would you? Are you quite sure?”

The girl's confusion dissolved into the same grim glare it had been at the start, but tottering on the edge of hysterics as she was, Augustin paid it no mind. She felt over tightened and snapped loose. It would be so difficult to pay any attention to her Professor like this, but surely the keen edge of fear would come back for her soon enough.

The girl, having probably concluded this was a lost cause, paced off again. But Augustin saw her brushing the rest of the handprint away a few paces later, and guffawed so loudly that the girl gave a total body flinch. But she didn't look back, and Augustin had a class.

She kept her hands out of the cuff of her sleeves the entire time. It made taking notes much easier. She even managed to voice a few questions, for all that Gaubert brushed them off unanswered.


	2. Fruit Compote, Step Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Flour girl!” Augustin twisted awkwardly in her seat to pat a hand on the girl's elbow, breaking into a grin that was wide enough to tug ominously at her chapped lips. She toned it down before they could actually split. Blood would probably not make an ideal second impression. “I didn't recognize you without all the dust!”

Fruit Compote, Step Two

> _Pour juice mixture into a small saucepan._
> 
> _Stir until gelatin dissolves._
> 
> _Add and dissolve one tablespoon sugar._

Cafeteria food was free, or at least included in Augustin's tuition. But it was just so very, very disappointing. Limp lettuce, oxidized all along the edges, with overly visible, stringy veins. It was difficult to even stab her flexible, plastic fork through it, scraping along the bottom of her equally plastic, but blessedly less flexible, tray, chasing after disorientingly square vegetation hopelessly. Still, her choices were soup or salad, and in the dead of summer, that wasn't much of a choice.

This was the best of two evils. It was evil nonetheless.

When a heavy hand clamped tightly down on her shoulder, her fork skittered madly out of her control, slips of dry carrot and wilted cabbage trailing behind it like a wake. She nearly cricked her neck, turning so quickly to stare wide eyed at the intruder on her table of solitude and salad.

The mantra of silent no's and the recollection of other hands doing much the same thing to her before shook her for a moment. But this hand was heavier, laying almost on her deltoid more than the supraspinatus muscle, and nowhere near trailing slimily up her neck.

Also, the hand was attached to a younger woman, who lacked either Absolon's exceedingly pointed jaw with its unnecessary goatee or Professor Gaubert's dark eyes and crow's feet. Immaculately painted lips moved around a voice that seemed destined for dismissing inferior employees tersely.

“You see? It's very disorienting.”

Augustin blinked at her blankly, unsure what she was supposed to make of that. A moment later, still gaping like a fish, she dipped her shoulder and shrugged her way out from beneath the pale fingers. The girl allowed it.

And that was probably not the right thing to think about a nineteen year old. Allowing things, as if she were some imperial heiress, bound by blood and duty to rein- reign?- rein in the world around her.

She spoke again, and Augustin's thoughts sank away in favour of actually interpreting the symbolic meanings of phonemes as part of the exchange of complex ideas, like any properly evolved member of the species.

“Strange people touching you without warning.” She clarified, and the pieces slotted neatly into place. Tailored pant suits, adamant posture, hair so bright it simply must have been dyed.

“Flour girl!” Augustin twisted awkwardly in her seat to pat a hand on the girl's elbow, breaking into a grin that was wide enough to tug ominously at her chapped lips. She toned it down before they could actually split. Blood would probably not make an ideal second impression. “I didn't recognize you without all the dust!”

“Lysandra,” the girl corrected in her flat way, as if there was simply not time for this nonsense. The implication was undercut by the fact that she was still there at all, fingers tight around the handle of an honest to Arceus lunch box, although admittedly a very expensive looking one with some kind of glossy, embossed covering and a handle that may or may not have been gold plated. She wasn't a geologist. “And I only have patisserie on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

The girl was so _pale_. Even the slightest amount of blood lent her cheeks a high pink patchwork. She probably burned hideously if she was outside for more than ten minutes.

The implications caught up with Augustin as she dwelled on the contrast of pink cheeks and dark suits. “Wait. You're in C.U.L.A.? Dressed like-” she gestured broadly to the charcoal linen jacket and matching pencil skirt, set off today by red flats that were almost precisely the same cool fire shade as Lysandra's hair. Very much not kitchen clothes. “- _That?_ ”

“I hardly see what my clothes have to do with my focus area,” Lysandra sniffed, turning up her nose and pinching her mouth into a thin line that was either annoyance or constipation. Augustin snickered again. She also ducked her head back down, flicking at the hopeless lettuce leaves on her tray again. They seemed to have gone soggy somehow. The scientific implications were no doubt fascinating. She was definitely not hiding, though. The laughter here was key.

“Well, don't you get food all over them, though? Bubbling sauces, or, you know. _Flour_.”

“I am entirely capable of using a stand mixer without coating everything in particulates.” Lysandra responded airily. Augustin resisted the urge to suggest that past evidence disproved that hypothesis, swallowing the sentence behind a bewildered raise of her eyebrow as Lysandra's very manicured hand wrapped itself around her tray and stole it right off the table.

“Uh?” Augustin asked. More or less. It was clearly an interrogative tone. Lysandra was not fluent in monosyllabic grunts, apparently and turned on a brisk heel, carting Augustin's very sad salad away with her. More or less truthfully, Augustin added, “I wasn't done eating that?”

“Yes, you were.” Lysandra informed her dutifully. Augustin wasn't sure what to make of the implicit offer, but any student worth their salt knew the sound of a free meal from two towns over. And the vast majority of them wouldn't turn it down for their lives.

“I am actually a vegetarian,” She offered hopefully, unfolding herself from her wilted posture eagerly, and trailing behind the undergrad. Lysandra was a _culinary_ student, after all. Who knew what sort of treats were waiting in her near future.

The salad actually slurped as it slid off her tray and into the trash bin, all too reminiscent of the sludgy glubbing of a garbodor. Lysandra's grimace looked personally insulted. “How much time do I have to make up for that atrocity before your next class?”

“Oh, I don't have class today.” Augustin replied sheepishly, picking at linty pills on her sweater. She didn't have much need these days for looking charmingly embarrassed, instead of simply shying away into herself completely. It was almost a novel feeling. “I'm only here for the food.”

That blotchy blush was back, although this time it was accompanied by a ticking vein in the girl's forehead. “That is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

Lysandra took off for the glass doors to the cafeteria patio, and Augustin followed unquestioningly, a chipper bounce in her step. For such an obviously young person, Lysandra certainly cut a wake that was easy to swim in.

Once they were seated opposite each other at one of the very many square, formica tables, Lysandra popped ope the latches on her inordinately well built lunch box- though it was still very much a box full of lunch in the end- and started dividing up tiny finger sandwiches, sorting cucumber and onion from cold cuts.

“What about your sweaters, then?” She asked, the question swerving out of nowhere and throwing Augustin's attention away from the offering of real, hand made food. Mostly. She was still starting at the sandwiches intently, after all.

“What about them?” The sandwiches were in a neat little pile on a literal cotton napkin, complete with bright red monogram. Was everything about this girl red?

“How do they relate to your studies, obviously.” It was in no way obvious. But the sandwich napkin was being slid across the table to her, and Augustin found herself in a mood to forgive such technicalities.

“Oh well, don't you know? All biologists wear enormous, ugly piles of wool in midsummer.” Was that cream cheese or chèvre? Augustin would bet her life on chèvre, all considered. “It helps us sympathize with all the little fuzzballs stuck out in this heat.”

She would care about the heat later. Right now, that judgmental look on Lysandra's face seemed like a grand invitation to eat an entire sandwich point in two bites.

It was chèvre.

“It's atrocious,” Lysandra decided. Focused as she was on the sandwiches, it took a moment for Augustin to realize she wasn't badmouthing her own cooking. Were sandwiches cooking?

Ultimately, sandwiches or no, Augustin realized she wasn't going to make any headway in this conversation if she wasn't looking directly at Lysandra. Her voice was many things: low in her throat for example. But it was also uncomfortably smooth, with only the constant note of disapproval as a cue for anything. Based on that alone, she would probably make the most horrifying teacher.

But her face was a stark contrast, sharply angled, with a square jaw and high cheekbones, eyebrows pencil thin and dark crimson. All those angles constantly shifting in such obvious, thunderous expression.

“You are a woman of the sciences; you ought to dress professionally.”

Augustin snorted at her sandwich collection, selecting another one as she risked a glance up, to read the messages in the clouds, well aware that the gesture could almost be a sarcastic eyeroll. Almost.

Lysandra's brow was arched in a pointed challenge, but her darkly painted lips were curled into a smile. They looked smoother and better cared for that Augustin's own, all raw and chapped from too much curious gnawing, constantly dry to the very razor's edge of pain.

It was the sort of expression that invited rejoinders that her tone had not. Augustin was willing to bet on the face.

“I don't think you're supposed to tear down a girl's fashion sense ten minutes into knowing her.”

“Oh?” Augustin flicked her eyes up again, and found her gaze caught on eyebrows raised mockingly high, and lips stretched into a much wider smile, baring the slightest hint of teeth. “Is that not precisely what you just did to me? Or is there an exception for knowing someone less than five minutes?”

Augustin dropped an uneaten morsel of sandwich back onto the napkin, freeing up her hands so that she could bury her face into them, choking a laugh into a beleaguered groan and peeking out between her fingers. “You're some kind of horrible mirror, right? Just here to reflect my faults back at me until I fix them?”

Lysandra's smile widened, and though it lacked any sort of real anger, and she was far too young, she still had the air of a school marm. Pleased and challenging all at once.

Her teeth were stained yellow at the gums.


	3. Fruit Compote, Step Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a clear cut scale to Lysandra's behaviours. The problem is, apparently, the scale doesn't go high enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you're still here, now you know the majesty of my update schedule. Congratulations, welcome to fanfiction hell. Possibly the next one won't take three months. Maybe.

Fruit Compote, Step Three

> _Stir in 1c chopped cherries._
> 
> _1 tsp lemon zest._
> 
> _1 tbsp lemon juice._
> 
> _¼ tsp vanilla extract._

The apartment was rattled by loud, electronic tones, and Augustin ignored them. She was asleep, by Arceus, and nothing was going to change that. Especially not noises. She'd been awake for thirty nine hours, and it couldn't possibly be daylight yet.

The chimes sounded again.

“G'way!” She bellowed, voice deep with sleep. Sleep that was so close. She could still get back there, if she tried. She squirmed her head under a cushion and flung her arms heavily over her ears. Breathing was a little difficult, but it didn't matter. What were the bells going to do _now_.

They rang again.

What even _were_ they? Sleep was slipping out of her grasp in the most unwelcome way, and she groaned hatefully. Was that the doorbell? Did she even _have_ a doorbell? She slid off the couch into a low, dreary crouch, and carefully unfolded herself, taking deep breaths as if that would in any way help.

At least whenever this was over with, she might make it all the way to her bed this time. Twenty six was far too young to have such pains in her back, and the sofa didn't help at all.

Who even rang someone's doorbell uninvited at- the clock on the microwave blinked 12:00 in a steady beat. Shoddy wiring. Well, whatever time it was. Late, probably. The doorbell went off _again._

“Fine, fine, I'm coming, hold your horseas.” She grumbled, straightening the rumpled blouse she'd somehow passed out in. Hopeless. It was definitely going to have to be ironed.

She settled her sternest TA glare into place, hoping her face wasn't covered in pillow marks, because that wasn't going to help anything, and groped the door open.

Of all the people who might demand her attention in the middle of the night on a Wednesday- Thursday?- Lysandra was simultaneously the least and most likely suspect. She did tend to assume the world spun around her, and unfortunately the world habitually agreed. Spoiled brat.

“I require your assistance.”

It was hard to stay angry with her looking like that- though admittedly Augustin tried. But her eyes were frantic, makeup smudged as if she'd been rubbing at them for hours. Her ponyta tail was loose, sagging, and frizzy, utterly unlike the slick, moussed length Augustin was accustomed to seeing. A quick glance down her own front again confirmed that even Lysandra's clothes were, somehow, worse for wear that the ones Augustin had fallen asleep in.

More important, though, were her shoes. Lysandra in heels was always a promising sign. Flats suggested she was worn down and likely to be snappish. Sneakers had only ever raised their head twice, both times on her way back from training with her team at the university's non-league gym.

Tonight, there were no shoes. Just bright red socks, not even stockings. Socks.

“Where've your shoes gone?” Augustin slurred, closing one eye against the hall lights, and shuffling out of the doorway in invitation.

Lysandra waved a pair of black ballet flats in Augustin's face as she stomped past, hanging loosely from her fingertips.

“'Kay, sure.” That was technically an answer to the question she had asked. Augustin trailed behind the frazzled undergrad blandly, barely remembering to kick the door shut. She has just wanted to go to bed. And here she was, collapsing onto her couch _again_.

Lysandra was breathing far too quickly, and the noise grated against Augustin's dimly lit nerves.

“Still d'nno what you're even here for?” She asked, concern starting to make its way through the fog of confusion and sleep. She was fairly certain that was the real question that needed to be answered.

“You're a biologist. I need biology help. Failing this exam will be unacceptable, but,” Lysandra trailed off in an actual shrug. Vague notions slid against eachother in Augustin's head, drawing an unsure conclusion. Did CULA students have general education requirements? She hadn't thought so, or surely there would have been more of them wandering around looking for tutors in the study room. But, mandatory or not, this was obviously serious to Lysandra. Augustin knocked her shoulder against the taller woman's and tried for a reassuring smile as she shook her head.

“Lys. Lyssie. Sandra.” She mumbled, trying to form the right sentence, with most of her higher faculties still offline. “I don't think eighty five percent is really a failing grade, and it's _late_.”

Lysandra curled forward, shoulders rolled in. Slumped, that was the word. It was as disorienting as everything else had been. “Please.”

The plea itself was unnecessary, overruled by the thick, wet sound of the single syllable. It wasn't a tone Augustin allowed herself to dwell on, forcing her way back to full consciousness. She sighed deeply, rolling her shoulders as if that would help at all.

“All right, grab your notes and we'll figure it out.” Augustin pulled herself up from the blessed, seductive couch again, vaguely convinced that her joints were _actually groaning._ But, if she was going to be expected to explain intro level science to a layman on three hours of sleep she would need, if at all possible, amphetamines. But caffeine would have to do.

She didn't notice Lysandra was trailing after her until she had finished filling the kettle and turned towards her sink to hunt down her press. Lysandra hovered near a bland, neutral counter, set before a bland, neutral wall, looking like a bloodied hole in reality in her black and gruesome reds. She was frowning, a three ring binder held loosely in one hand, and Augustin realized with a sharp pang that this was absolutely the wrong way for her to be here. Lysandra had visited before, of course, but never held so taut that she might snap at any moment, eyes hollow in their sockets, small muscles in her shoulders and cheek twitching.

It took an act of Arceus itself to still the heavy sigh that curled in Augustin's chest, but she managed, tottering towards her small refrigerator, and emerging with two Shiny Tauros energy drinks. They were vile in the extreme, with a taste somewhere between tamato berries and sweat. But they had a kick.

She threw one at Lysandra without warning, just for the sake of watching her porcelain posture crumble in shock. Her binder clattered to the floor, pages crumpling on the tile as modestly manicured fingers wrapped around the frigid can.

“Well,” Augustin aimed for chipper, unsure how well she managed it. “At least your reflexes aren't shot! If you have any pity, you won't throw that back here. It'll explode when it hits the floor.”

“I'll buy you a cleaning service.” Lysandra returned, in slow, precise syllables. They made no sense in Augustin's addled brain until it was far too late, and the can was sailing back through the air.

“Merde!” She screeched, reaching for it, and failing completely. It smashed onto the tile with a solid crack, and rolled to a stop, unbroken. “Hah! Chance is on my side to-”

A low hissing started up, half disguised by the boiling of the kettle, which clicked to silence just as the tab atop the can blew, spewing a ruddy brown syrup all over everything, including Agustin herself, all the way up to her knees as it spun like a foaming, murderous top.

“You were saying?” Lysandra prompted, gathering her spilled binder before the puddle could spread to reach it.

“I was _saying_ ,” Augustin let the sentence hand unfinished, sticky-soaked and frowning. She raised one foot out of them mess and watched her socks drip. Disgusting.

Lysandra padded through the filth barefooted, her socks in a sad heap on the countertop, and pulled the coffee press out from the cabinet above the sink. Augustin had all but forgotten that, distracted by her frigid, sickly smelling bath. She watched Lysandra fill it with grounds and hot water while she tried to decide if taking her socks off was worth having to bend over, or if it would only lead to concussion. 

“Are you pausing for effect, or did you forget?” Lysandra prompted eventually. Augustin had most certainly forgotten, but the other end of the sentence rushed back to her easily enough.

“You're _horrible._ I don't know why anyone ever tries to help you with anything.”

Maybe that had been overly harsh. The stiffness of Lysandra's shoulders was already returning, and Augustin bit her cheek. All this mess, and for barely two minutes reprieve. Perhaps it was more serious than she'd imagined. She glanced again at Lysandra's bare feet. That wasn't a level she knew the meaning of. Lysandra was so quiet, when she wanted to be, and when she was upset she always wanted to be.

They stood in silence, feet in a puddle of energy drink, and minds in a cloud of weariness. It stretched on and on, until a fluffy brown head peered around the kitchen doorway, followed in short order by the rest of the young Eevee's body. She chittered endearingly, and broke the silence.

Augustin plunged the filter on the press, and Dandelion pawed for affection at Lysandra's calves, demanding to be carried in exchange for being woken up by the commotion, and drawn out of her basket by the emotions it forced into Augustin's mind. All entirely too much for a level fifteen to handle.

Lysandra hefted the little pokémon onto one hip, while Augustin poured coffee into the largest two mugs she had and, after some small deliberation, sighed and poured the unopened can of Shiny Tauros into one of them.

“I'm not su-”

“No. This is how I die,” Agustin cut Lysandra short, raising the stinking mug like an amulet. “But I go willingly. Come on.”

She ruffled Danedlion's fur, because ruffling Lysandra's head was as likely as not to cost her an entire hand, and forced herself to swallow as much of the lukewarm abomination as she could in one long pull. And then, catching up Lysandra's mug as well, she squelched unpleasantly to what had been described in the lease as the “breakfast bar.”

Lysandra and Dandelion followed.

 


End file.
